Please share your expertise, advice, opinions, and words of wisdom with me as I embark on this journey along with fellow team mates, Steven Wang and Bryan Cromlish.

I have a request: HAPPO has grown thanks to the phenomenal participation of community members. It is only through your participation and assistance that we can get the Canadian community running. Even if you aren’t in Canada, you can help! Just spread the word to your Canadian colleagues: whether they are leaders in the PR industry, or students who will be future leaders. Let the world know. It is our responsibility to the communities that have given us so much to give back by fostering their growth. Your participation is directly the cause of this growth.

So as we brace for HAPPO 4/30 Let us remember, that Canada Can! Also join the HAPPO LinkedIN group. It is a great opportunity to network and will significantly increase your chances to make lasting connections and set you on your path to a brilliant, exciting, and engaging new career!

In economics there is a concept called diminishing marginal utility. Essentially, this concept states that as you utilize more of a good or commodity, the satisfaction or pleasure you derive from it decreases between each consumption.

So, if I was to eat one slice of pizza, followed by another slice, followed by a third slice, the utility I would derive from subsequent consumption would decrease.

I am beginning to entertain the idea, that social media has diminishing marginal utility.

Please don’t hate: after the utopia concept of the wonders that social media can do, people like Malcolm Gladwell and PR expert Geoff Livingston have moved away from social media.It seems that the more eggs you put your basket in, the more baskets you have. but the more emptier they begin to look. The more social media you utilize, the less control you have over it. There is too much decentralization and you cant always utilize them efficiently, and logistically speaking, it becomes too much of a hassle.

the result? poor social media policy.

The next time you hear, read, and subsequently discuss social media in terms of PR, think about how much utility can be derived, before it starts diminishing.

David Clare writes a blog ‘The PR View’ at www.theprview.co.uk. David studies Public Relations and Marketing at the University of Lincoln. In his third and final year, he will graduate at the end of May this year. David wrote a dissertation on the uses of Twitter in Crisis Management and has a deep interest in the use of Social Media for Public Relations.

What Happened

On Tuesday 12 January, at 16.53 Haiti time, a 7.0 magnitude earthquake hit Haiti. This was quickly followed by two aftershocks, measuring 5.9 and 5.5 on the Richter scale.

The first aid relief didn’t arrive till two days later, by then an estimated 100,000 casualties were reported.

I am a very strong advocate of online newsrooms and I understand that generally having a presence online is one of the best things you can do. Why is this? Well, One of the reasons is that it costs close to nothing to build your brand online, specially with free social media services. This is especially great for students attempting to stand out for prospective employers.

There’s many other reasons that Pete Codella himself highlights in the video as benefits of having an online presence, and no wonder he has a successful, unique service, called NewsCactus. Just look at what NewsCactus clients are saying (navigate the website, as you learn more about the service).

However, there’s some things I disagree with. For one, Codella says,

“the more baskets your information is in, the more opportunities you have to rank high…”

It’s marvelous if a company can put its eggs in multiple baskets. But it only works when the company has enough eggs to show. More baskets mean less eggs per basket, and the less visible they are.

If a company uses all the social media and uses their website or other online presence as a center point of consolidation, this is good. But there are two issues that one must take into account:

Can you keep up with the need to constantly update your various presences with relevant information?

Is it feasible, or even necessary? In other words, do you have a following, or a target market that you can reach by expanding across the multiple networks.

It should go without saying, that a company must build its multiple networks one by one (or simultaneously if it is affordable, and meets the conditions mentioned above.

It is a really progressive idea to get involved in all facets and be everywhere, but in a situation of crisis, it may become much more unmanageable.

A simple example is the very prominent Australian bank, BankWest. BankWest has multiple YouTube accounts. EverydayOlympics has been stagnant for over a year now, and HappyBanking has been quiet for an equally long time. This is the same with their Twitter account.

The idea is, if it doesn’t need to be done, don’t do it. It’s Ockham’s Razor of sorts. And while I admire Pete Codella’s unique online newsroom service, I believe that being ubiquitous doesn’t work all the time.

In the last issue of the Winters Free Press (March Edition), I began a section called Meeting the Fellows. Who are Fellows?

Fellows are chosen from both inside the University community and outside in the world beyond the campus boundaries. They are selected on the basis of the contribution they can make to the academic, intellectual and artistic life of the Winters community

Most people however, are not aware of who the fellows are and what their role is. Each month we (try to) introduce a fellow by either interviewing them, or writing an article about the work they do. This allows both the students to recognize who the fellows are and what they stand for, and it allows for the appreciation of the revered members of our community.

The March issue had the following article. Please click the image for the full version. Stay tuned for more. If you would like to contribute to the Winters Free Press, please leave a message here and we will get in touch with you.

Some of you may know that I am an editor for a newspaper called the Winters Free Press at York University. We focus on finearts, primarily; however, we also express our artistic side in things that at first glance, may not have anything to do with creativity.

We have two designers for the newspaper, and I wanted to see how they work together. However, one of my designers got busy so I asked the other one to take care of all of it. This was the first time I had asked him to do anything and I was a little bit afraid of the outcome. I didn’t know what I would do if the issue got delayed.

However, David King, a student at York University, not only took me into confidence, he blew my mind. We discussed how sometimes working for clients in the professional field squats some creativity since you have to take into account what the client wants, not what you want. However, despite having worked in a professional environment, King has not lost his touch. He is a fabulous designer, a great multi-tasker and a humble person. This is what I look for in a designer: meritocracy and humility.

Thank you, David.

The next issue of the Winters Free Press will be out on stands on Tuesday, the 21st of October.

It is a very arduous task, if not impossible, to affirm whether it is the privately or publicly owned media that facilitate democracy and act as a counterweight to institutions of power. The reason in part is the existence of various schools of thought on notions of the public sphere, the constitution of democracy, and cultural hegemony. Another facet of this conundrum draws from the problems of cultural integration and dominant ideologies, and how they are very intricately connected to these notions of democracy and publicity. In this paper, the author will attempt to discuss the differing schools of thought on the public sphere, moving on to discuss the nature of both the public and private media, drawing a conclusion as to which form serves a democratic way of social life.

About the Author…

Born in Karachi, Pakistan in an Adventist hospital, I grew up in a city where on one side I experienced poverty and oppression, while on the other I had the good fortune of Tabish Bhimani being a member of an upper middle-class business family...more...